Ahmadinejad scolded  by Egypt's top cleric over interference

He also said Ahmadinejad must uphold the rights of his Shiite-ruled country's Sunni minority.

The man also pushed a bodyguard, but he was quickly dealt with and Ahmadinejad was able to enter his car.

In front of the mosque, four youths waved placards scrawled with slogans against Iran over its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime in its 22-month conflict with Sunni-led rebels.

Ahmadinejad will attend a summit of the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation that opens Wednesday in Cairo to tackle crises ranging from the French-led battle against Islamist militants in Mali to the Syrian civil war.

The visit comes amid thawing relations between Egypt and Iran, which severed ties with Cairo in 1980 in protest over a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979, the same year Iran's Islamic revolution toppled the pro-West shah.

Iran has been reaching out to Egypt since Islamists came to power in the wake of the 2011 revolution that ousted veteran president Hosni Mubarak, a staunch critic of Tehran.

Morsi, who hails from the powerful Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, has attended a Non-Aligned Summit in Iran, becoming the first Egyptian president to travel to Tehran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

 AFP